In the Shadow of the Noose: Mad Earl Ferrers: The Last English Nobleman Hanged for Murder

by Randall, Dan Alexander

  ‘When I heard the pistol go,’ she said, ‘I run into the yard, and the other maid-servant with me.’

  ‘What happened afterwards?’

  ‘We stayed in the yard a while, a few minutes, and came back to the wash-house. My Lord came when we were in the wash-house, and called. He hooped and hallooed, “Where are you all?” I went out and said, “We are here, my Lord!” He ordered that we should walk down to the house.’

  The maid said she helped the injured Mr Johnson. ‘I took him up to bed by the arm, by his Lordship’s order.’

  Elizabeth Saxon, another maid, was the next witness. Her evidence included an admission that she had heard her employer shouting at Mr Johnson.

  ‘I heard them very loud,’ she said. ‘I heard my Lord say, “Down on your other knee and declare that you have acted against Lord Ferrers!”, and then the pistol went off, and I and the other maid were frightened and run away.’

  The third maid, Elizabeth Dolman, who had worked for Earl Ferrers for two months at the time of the murder, was sworn in. She told the Lords how she witnessed her master pull Mr Johnson by the wig and threaten him following the shooting.

  ‘He said he would shoot him through the head,’ she said.

  George Perrott, a further lawyer for the prosecution, then had the opportunity of questioning the dead man’s daughter, Sarah Johnson.

  Composed and articulate, Miss Johnson told the Lords she was summoned to Staunton Harold at between 4pm and 5pm on January 18th, the message being relayed by a servant.

  ‘I asked what he wanted me for,’ she said, ‘and he said my father was taken very ill.’

  She described being taken to Earl Ferrers, asking after her father and being shown upstairs by a maid. She said she was followed by the Earl who told her that he thought he had not shot her father.

  ‘Sometime after that, Lord Ferrers came up again and he turned the clothes down and he said he saw he had shot him and throwed (sic) something out of a bottle; I don’t know what it was; he poured something upon it out of a bottle.’

  Mr Perrott asked, ‘Did he tell you how the accident happened?’

  ‘He did not say anything about that.’

  ‘Did he at any time?’

  ‘He said he had shot him. He said it was what he designed.’

  She agreed that the Earl had settled to look after her family if her father died, and went on to describe how he had demonstrated to Dr Kirkland the angle which he had held the pistol at the time of the shooting.

  Earl Ferrers was ‘very angry,’ Miss Johnson said, and kept attempting to pull the bedclothes off her father.

  After giving evidence about how Earl Ferrers had tried to evict her father from his farm, Miss Johnson was allowed to step down.

  She was replaced by Thomas Kirkland, who told the court that he had known the Earl for ‘many years’ and been his physician for nine.

  Dr Kirkland described the scene when he went into the bedroom where Mr Johnson lay. ‘Upon seeing Mr Johnson and that he had lost no blood, I bled him,’ he said. ‘He complained of a violent pain in his bowels.’

  He said he examined the entry hole, which was on the left hand side and below the ribs, and decided that the shot could not be removed, and so simply dressed the wound.

  Damning evidence that the Earl had planned the killing followed. ‘He [Earl Ferrers] was not sorry for it,’ said Kirkland. ‘He owned it was premeditated; that he intended to shoot him, for he said he was a villain and deserved death.’

  He then related how Lord Ferrers was drunk, but not incoherent, and how he refused to allow his mortally-wounded steward to be moved to his own home, ordering that ‘he shall not be moved till he be either better or dead’, and adding that he was glad Mr Johnson was at the Hall so that he could, ‘plague the rascal.’ Dr Kirkland said he went against the aristocrat’s instructions and arranged for Mr Johnson to be taken to his own home after the Earl had gone to bed.

  As he was accused of murder, Earl Ferrers was not entitled to legal representation and had to defend himself in court, doing the best that he could without a lawyer. It was for this reason that he then cross-examined Kirkland himself. Having little to work with, he attempted to impute some underhand motives to the surgeon. ‘At the time that we were talking this over a bottle of wine,’ he said, ‘did you talk with me as a friend; or did you intent to betray me?’

  But Kirkland, a straightforward and honest man, did not fall into this trap. ‘I do own, my Lord, that I intended to deceive you,’ he said. ‘And I thought it absolutely necessary.’

  Richard Springthorpe, one of the men who captured Earl Ferrers on the morning that Mr Johnson died, was the sixth witness for the prosecution. When asked to describe the events of the day, he said he found out that his friend Mr Johnson had died and went straight to Staunton Harold. ‘When I came to the hall-yard,’ he said, ‘my Lord in a few minutes came. He seemed to be going to the stable, with his stockings down and his garters in his hands. His Lordship, seeing me, demanded to know what I wanted.

  ‘I presented my pistol to his Lordship and I said it was he I wanted, and I would have him. He put his hands, whether he was going to put his garters into his pocket or to pull out a pistol I cannot say, but he suddenly ran into the house.

  ‘I never saw more of him for two hours. In about two hours he came to the garret window… he said “How is Johnson?” I said he was dead. He said, “You are a lying scoundrel, God damn you.”’

  Once Mr Springthorpe had convinced the nobleman that he had killed his steward, the Earl told him to bring the large and increasingly agitated crowd into his home for food and drink.

  Mr Springthorpe said, ‘I told him I did not come for victuals, but for him – and I would have him. He went away from the window swearing he would not be taken.’

  He told the gathered Lords that it was another two hours before the Earl was seized on the bowling green. ‘Two colliers had hold of his Lordship. I said I would take care no-body should hurt him.’

  Mr Springthorpe explained that he took weapons from two men to prevent them from using them against the Earl.

  ‘I heard my Lord say he had shot a villain and a scoundrel and, clapping his hand upon his bosom, he said, “I glory in his death!” That is all I know of the matter.’

  The last witness for the prosecution was Francis Kinsey, who ran the pub in Ashby-de-la-Zouch where Earl Ferrers was taken after he was apprehended. He was there from Saturday until Monday and according to Mr Kinsey was very well-behaved – although he asked the landlord many times whether Mr Johnson was dead, and said that he would not believe it until he had heard it from the coroner.

  Following Mr Kinsey’s evidence the Attorney-General said, ‘My Lords, we rest it here for the crown.’

  Earl Ferrers was invited to offer evidence in his defence. He requested more time to prepare as ‘the law will not allow me the assistance of counsel in this case, in which, of all others, I should think most wanted.’

  His plea was refused and Elizabeth Burgeland was recalled for cross-examination.

  She was asked about her employer’s drinking habits. ‘He drank some brandy in his tea in the morning,’ she said and added that some time after the shooting, ‘he was quite fuddled.’

  Earl Ferrrers, getting more frantic, interrupted the proceedings. ‘My Lords, by the kind of defence recommended to me, it will be impossible to go on at present. There are several witnesses to be examined, and really, my Lords, I am quite unprepared.’

  The Lord High Steward – who was notoriously bad-tempered due to gout caused by a fondness of port – slapped him down. ‘My Lord Ferrers,’ he said, ‘it is required that you should open the nature of your defence. My Lords will be able to judge from that, whether it will be proper to give your Lordship time to make your defence, agreeable to your request.’

  ‘My Lords,’ continued the Earl, ‘I can hardly express myself, the very circumstance shocks me so much; but I am informed, from several circumstances, of a
n indisposition of mind.’

  The peers trailed out of Westminster Hall to decide on what would happen next. After some time they returned, and the Lord High Steward told Ferrers, ‘You are to proceed to your defence.’

  Again Earl Ferrers prevaricated, stating that he did not know how to proceed but that he intended to defend himself on the ground that he was mad. ‘The defence I mean is occasional insanity of mind,’ he said. ‘I am convinced, from recollecting within myself, that, at the time of this action, I could not know what I was about.’

  On this, the first afternoon of his trial, he was forced to continue as best he could and called a further two witnesses; John Bennefold, a wig-maker, clerk and magistrate who had known the Earl for twenty years, and Thomas Goostrey, a business adviser.

  Questioning the witnesses in a chaotic manner, Earl Ferrers asked Mr Bennefold what he thought of his state of mind. ‘His Lordship has always behaved in a very strange manner,’ said Bennefold. ‘Very flighty, very much like a man out of his mind – more particularly so within these two years past – such as being in liquor, and swearing and cursing and the like, and talking to himself, very much like a man disordered in his senses… and then he has behaved himself as well as any other gentleman at times.’

  He confirmed that he knew Lord Ferrers’ uncle Henry, who had died in a lunatic asylum, and that he had heard that another family member, his aunt, Lady Barbara Shirley, had also suffered from mental illness. The Attorney-General asked the witness, ‘Did Mrs Shirley [the countess] ever treat him as an insane person, or talk of sending for a physician to him?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Did any other person think my Lord so insane as to want that?’

  ‘I cannot recollect any person in particular,’ came the reply.

  Mr Goostrey, a reputed lawyer and acquaintance of the Earl’s for a decade, was initially not the best defence witness. Far from giving examples of the aristocrat’s eccentricities and lunacy he told the court he found him to be of ‘a very remarkable disposition’ and ‘extremely sensible’ and capable of being lucid in his business dealings. After much questioning, he reluctantly pointed to some odd business decisions and his stubbornness as proof of his insanity. ‘I have frequently had directions from him to do things that in my opinion were either fruitless, or opposite to his interest, and upon those occasions I have always found it in vain to endeavour to dissuade his Lordship from it,’ he said. ‘I have never been capable of accounting for his behaviour otherwise than by apprehending that he has been at times out of his mind.’

  By way of an example of this ‘madness’, Goostrey cited a visit to one Sir Thomas Stapleton. Sir Thomas had offended his Lordship so he visited the lawyer ‘to draw an advertisement to be inserted in all the papers intending to challenge Sir Thomas Stapleton [to a duel], and to post him for a coward if he did not give him satisfaction. I was extremely uneasy and with difficulty did dissuade him from it.’

  Mr Goostrey said that, from that time onwards, he had avoided seeing the nobleman, although he did say that he had visited him during his incarceration in the Tower of London. The Solicitor-General asked whether Mr Goostrey believed that Earl Ferrers was mad when he wanted to challenge Sir Thomas, or merely had a violent temper.

  ‘I did then think it insanity,’ he replied. Getting into his stride, he went on to say that because Earl Ferrers was unpredictable he ‘made it a rule never to contradict him’, and later, when asked why he had never – as the Earl’s lawyer – asked a doctor to declare him insane, added, ‘I look upon it that he was insane only at times, and in particular instances.’

  Various Lords continued to ask Mr Goostrey questions about Ferrer’s mental state. The last question of the day came from Earl Moreton: ‘Did you ever see him in such a condition that he was incapable of judging between a moral and an immoral act?’

  To which Mr Goostrey replied, ‘I cannot say I ever did.’

  Proceedings were adjourned, and it was ruled that Laurence Earl Ferrers be remanded as a prisoner in the Tower of London until 10am the following day.

  Chapter 6

  THE TRIAL, DAY TWO – THE DEFENCE

  ‘OYEZ, OYEZ, OYEZ! Lieutenant of the Tower, bring forth your prisoner, Laurence Earl Ferrers, to the bar, pursuant to the order of the House of Lords.’

  As on the first day of the trial, the noble prisoner was brought into Westminster Hall, which was again packed to the rafters, to kneel before his peers. He was ordered to rise and continue with his defence.

  To help prove that insanity was a family trait, he asked his first witness, Thomas Huxley, about his uncle Henry, the previous Earl Ferrers, whom the witness had known for 14 years before his death.

  ‘What was the matter with him?’

  ‘He was a lunatic.’

  He then confirmed that two other female members of the family had been diagnosed as being insane.

  His next witness, Wilhelmina Deborah Cotes, confirmed that she had known the Earl’s aunt Lady Barbara Shirley and said, ‘she was always looked upon as a lunatic.’

  Reverend Walter Shirley, the Earl’s younger brother – a rather more sensitive man, who wrote poetry and hymns as a pastime – did his best to help his sibling, stating that he believed him to be a lunatic, despite not having seen him for two years while away preaching in Ireland.

  ‘I have seen him talking to himself, clenching his fists, grinning and having several gestures of a madman, without any seeming cause leading thereto,’ he said. ‘I have likewise very frequently known him extremely suspicious of plots and contrivances against him from his own family, and when he was desired to give some account what the plots were that he meant, he could not make any direct answer. Another reason I have for thinking him so is his falling into violent passions without any adequate cause.’

  When asked whether the family had ever thought of having his brother committed to an asylum, the Rev Shirley replied that they had, but ‘were afraid to go through with it’ in case the doctors failed to find him insane. That would leave the way clear for Earl Ferrers to sue them for ‘scandalum magnatum’ – the criminal offence, and civil tort, of the defamation of a peer of the realm.

  He agreed that members of the family were not on the best of terms with the current Earl; on one occasion, after a hunt, he had been berated by his brother for no good reason. ‘As I chose to avoid the bottle, I went up stairs to the ladies,’ he said. ‘Lady Ferrers at that time lived with him; and, without any previous quarrel, my Lord came upstairs into the room; and after standing for some time with his back to the fire, he broke out into the grossest abuse of me, insulting me and swearing at me. I cannot to this day or hour conceive any reason for it.’

  The Rev Shirley was allowed to step down and was replaced by one of Earl Ferrers’ tenants, Richard Phillips, who had known the prisoner for 18 years. He told the Lords that the Earl had told him that insanity was in his family and that the dead servant, Mr Johnson thought the Earl mad. The Attorney-General dismissed this evidence as hearsay, and moved on to the next witness, Gold Clarges, a relation on Laurence Shirley’s mother’s side (her maiden name had been Clarges). Clarges said, ‘I have looked upon your Lordship as a lunatic for many years,’ and that he thought him to have a particularly ‘jealous and suspicious nature.’ He went so far as to say that he avoided his company wherever possible.

  It was surprising that Earl Ferrers called the next witness, given that he must have known that the man would portray him as not only mad, but as a vicious thug.

  Peter Williams, the husband of a London publican, said, ‘I have often observed your Lordship, when I have been in your company, to be spitting in the glass and biting your lips and stamping about the room, which induced me to believe your Lordship was not in your right senses.’

  He told the court that in January 1759 the Earl had sent him a horse as a present; in April of the same year, he had decided he wanted it returned, and had gone to the Williams’ home with armed servants to take i
t back. ‘You bid one of your servants to knock the padlock off the stable door. He did so. My wife, hearing a noise in the yard, came to know the reason, and without any ceremony your Lordship felled her to the ground with your fist. Upon my seeing this, I went into the yard and asked your Lordship what you meant by this behaviour.’

  At this, Earl Ferrers interrupted the Mr Williams swiftly saying, ‘My Lords, I desire to stop this witness; I only meant to ask him a general question.’

  But Mr Williams, who had known the Lord for 17 years, was undeterred, presumably because he was angry at the way his wife had been abused, and Ferrers’ request was refused.

  During the rest of his evidence – which Ferrers again attempted and failed to stop – he said that he believed the Earl’s ‘insanity’ had worsened in recent years, stating firmly that he had believed it had been mad of him to come ‘on horseback with guns and other offensive weapons to take away the mare.’

  Mr Williams’ wife, Elizabeth, was next on the stand. She said that she ran a public house in London, and that Earl Ferrers often visited when he was in the area and repeatedly behaved oddly. ‘He always was a-musing and talking to himself,’ she said. ‘He spit in the looking-glass, tore the pictures, swearing he would break my bureau open and would break all the glasses in my house, and would throttle me if I would not let him do it.’

  She knew of no reason why he was like this but said he was ‘like a delirious man.’ ‘He frequently used to come. I made him coffee and sent up a dish. He always drank it out of the spout, which surprised me.’

  She said the coffee was always hot and added, ‘He always went about the town like a madman, throttled me and threw me down in the yard one day when he took the horse away.’

  When asked by Ferrers, ‘Have you ever seen me commit any other acts of outrage besides those you have mentioned?’

  ‘A great many more that are worse,’ she said. ‘Swearing, cursing, damning us and wishing us all at hell and himself at hell; and he threatened to break the glasses and talked to himself for hours together in bed.’